The musty print classified was never a great way to find a date. Most of the time, all it ever offered was a terse mumble of data: ''SWF, 26, brown eyes and brown hair.'' The online personal is completely different. The ''profile'' of someone looking for romance on a site like Match.com or Salon.com can overflow with tantalizing information, as when a single woman named Lovebundlenyc reveals that her favorite books include Hunter S. Thompson's ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,'' the ''Jeeves Omnibus'' and that children's story about Ferdinand the Bull. Some people make strange, bold proclamations: ''I'm a smooth operator with great hands.'' Others use verbal wit to play with the conventions of the form: ''Unscrupulous Man Seeks Patsy,'' writes one online lonely heart.

Americans have fallen hard for the online personal. While other Internet businesses have been sputtering, online personals are a full-throttle success. This year, Match.com subscriptions hit 653,000, and the online-personals industry as a whole generated more than $53 million in the first three months of this year. By the end of 2002, about 15 million Americans will have visited a dating Web site.

The bigger this pool gets, the more normalized (and less geeky) the process becomes. As with other online social behavior, early adopters had to battle the scary hype: Pedophiles are out there! Liars, creeps and dweebs! But when newlyweds on the Times weddings page casually mention their ''magical'' first e-mail exchange, you know the switch has flipped.

The popularity of online personals has tossed some interesting behavioral mutations into the dating pool. Because potential dates often engage in intimate e-mail before meeting, the first date is far less blind. But the very ease and anonymity of the initial experience -- the way you can browse at 2 a.m., zap a promising profile to a friend for feedback or change your profile or photo at any time -- also encourages social experimentation. This is a particular benefit for women, for whom flirtation with strangers in the wee hours has always carried greater risk. For both men and women, Internet dating may allow singles to make contact with dates outside their social circles. Online glances go beyond the crowded room of one's own insular demographic.

Pundits have denounced the gamelike quality of pointing and clicking at online profiles. And there's some truth to this: with the eBay ease of Internet romance, it's simple to continually dip back in, looking for an improved model. But then, is it really such a crime to make dating more fun?

Source:  The New York Times